Wild boar speedbump

By BECKY NELSON
Summer keeps chugging along here at the farm. The only crops that gave up the ghost early were the cucumbers, leaving some who ordered cukes for pickles with empty jars. The bean field was set to produce what looked like a great late crop, with blossoms covering the plants. Late last week, however, the deer found the rows and mowed off about 400 feet of plants, leaving us beanless.

The summer squash and zucchini crops keep producing, cabbage is ready for cutting and the tomatoes and peppers, protected under hoop-house covers, are producing as well as they were a full month ago. We still have hay to cut, as well. If the weather cooperates, we have some good second cut crops ready to be cut, dried and baled. Fall crops are also in full swing, with apple and pumpkin harvests coming in with good crops. We have also starting our fall clean-ups, with raspberries being pruned, wood being cut toward maple season and first-plantings of crops ready to be pulled and cover crops applied. If the weather cooperates and our we can keep up our stamina, it all just might get done. Maybe. We always enter the fall season with high hopes and long lists, but something always seems to fall by the wayside.

Fall is probably our busiest season. With summer still producing and frost threatening, it is always a mad scramble to get everything accomplished. Sales at the store always slump a bit in the fall, making it imperative that we cut back on help and try to accomplish the extra work ourselves. As we get a little older every year, it gets a little tougher, and a whole lot more tiring. We are investigating ways to cut back on production without a big financial hit and make the production that we do accomplish a bit more friendly to us aging folks, but the fact remains that work … lots of it … remains to be done every day.

Throw into the mix an unexpected roadblock or speed bump, and life gets even tougher. With lists of work as long as our sleeves, we were very discouraged to wake up to yet another area of critter damage the other morning. A patch about 15 feet long and a dozen wide was all dug up on our lawn. Better than in the fields, I suppose. I glanced at the lawn on my way out of the living room, thinking I had better squeeze an hour to mow it, and noticed a big patch of brown. Taking an inspection tour, we found the diggings are about six or seven inches deep, with ridges of topsoil and grass pushed up at the sides. Wild boar. We are not happy.

Some two decades ago, or more, one of our neighbor farmers, Jim Amsden of Elton’s Uphill Vegetable farm, had a raging battle public battle with wild boar. Not native to our area, the wild boar escapees from the hunting park in Croydon found the area delightful for breeding. Lots of folks here in Newport, in Croydon, in Cornish and all over had problems with the pigs. Digging up gardens, destroying corn crops, being a nuisance. Hunters were hired to cut down the population, and things have been pretty quiet for several years. It is looking like the population may be increasing again. With no natural predators here, it looks like pigs may be back in a significant way. I am afraid we may be in for more challenges. As we have seen with squirrels short on food that are taking advantage of our crops and deer with a taste for squash, pumpkins and beans taking a big bite out of our profits, wild boar may be poised to challenge our farming efforts. We are hoping it was just a pig on its way through that has created a speedbump, not a road shutdown. We shall be vigilant.

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” my Dad used to jokingly say. He was right.